Originally Posted by Phil Hoskins
There is no reasonable refutation of the claim that these workers are indispensable to our economy. To the extent that is true, we as a people are better served finding ways to legalize their presence and create an orderly process for it in my opinion.

Pardon my ignorance, but I don't see how it is irrefutable that our economy needs *illegal* workers... perhaps I don't understand what you mean by "legalize their presence"?

I can't believe you mean to legalize the currently illegal wages and conditions - but isn't that the argument employers make when they say without these "illegal" options, their businesses would suffer - perhaps fail - and hence the economy would also suffer? Do they really need tomato-picking to stay at 1.5 cents per pound rather than the 2.5 cents per pound that would be required if they paid minimum wage to legal immigrants?

Or maybe you mean amnesty - would you suggest the people who broke the law by immigrating illegally, knowingly, should be given preferential treatment over those that have applied and are waiting, some for years, for LEGAL immigration?


I realize that I am coming late to this discussion, and don't understand everything (or hardly anything, for that matter!) about it... it just seems to me that if we said "NO MORE", PERIOD, to illegal immigration workers (and employers!), that legal immigration would have to increase, and those that have been patiently observing the law would be the new *legal* immigrant workers, and for that matter a lot of the currently illegal workers could become legal as they filter through the line... but the main benefit is that there would be far fewer illegal jobs to draw the immigrants to the dangerous illegal path, and that once here there would be much less immigrant worker abuse, since they would have no reason to help hide it.

This seems so obvious to me, what am I missing??


Castigat Ridendo Mores
(laughter succeeds where lecturing fails)

"Those who will risk nothing, risk everything"